Dragons at the Party. Jon Cleary

mate. You’re not fooling around with a tribe of fucking amateurs.’

      Seville smiled to himself: Pinjarri hadn’t changed. ‘I’m sure I’m not.’

      That evening Seville caught a taxi into the city, but, having looked up the Entertainment Centre in a directory he had bought, had the taxi drop him some distance from the Centre and walked the rest of the way. He took off his jacket and carried it over his arm: even the Swiss were known to relax occasionally.

      He passed a gun shop on the way, but didn’t pause. He had gone looking for such a store when the city had closed for Saturday afternoon; he had found two, including this one, but his practised eye had told him they were too well secured to be broken into. It was then that he had at last decided he had to risk contacting Pinjarri.

      On the last part of his walk he was drawn towards the Entertainment Centre by the crowd heading there. He went down past Chinese restaurants and shops; a dragon with illuminated red eyes stared at him from a window and in the doorway beside it a Chinese girl smiled invitingly. Then the Centre loomed over him, an auditorium that looked like a dozen others he had seen in other parts of the world. An ideal place for a bomb scare, he remarked automatically. Just like all the others.

      The crowd was pouring into the big building. All of them young, some of them bizarre in their dress; he stood out amongst them as if he were in fancy dress. Tonight was the first night of the Australian Pop Festival: the stars of the show were Dire Straits, direct from their American tour. Affronted nationalism hadn’t kept the hordes away; they poured into the wide lobby as if the First Fleeters had come back to play the Top Ten of 1788. Seville took no notice of the irony: he was the true internationalist in the crowded lobby, the terrorist without patriotism.

      He had been standing below the steps leading to Door 3 less than five minutes when he felt the tap on his elbow. ‘Mr Gideon?’

      The Aboriginal boy could not have been more than fifteen or sixteen; he was light-skinned and he reminded Seville of the Arab boys he had seen in the guerrilla training camps in the Bekaa valley in Lebanon. He looked just as serious and apprehensive as those boys.

      ‘Yes, I’m Gideon. Am I supposed to follow you?’ The boy looked surprised and Seville smiled. ‘I’ve done this before. Many times.’

      They pushed their way through the crowd, going against the stream. I may be in dire straits myself before the night is out, thought Seville wrily; but danger was an old ambience and he never felt uncomfortable in it. He followed the boy out into the busy street and they turned left. Five minutes’ more walking brought them under what Seville took to be a traffic fly-over. There the boy, without a word, suddenly darted away.

      Seville moved into the shadow of a pylon, stood waiting. He flexed the calf of his right leg, felt the knife in its sheath strapped there. If Dallas Pinjarri brought trouble, he would be ready for it.

      Above his head he could hear the swish of tyres and the occasional rumble of a heavy truck. Through the pylons he could see the bright lights of the Darling Harbour complex, a new development since he had last been in Sydney. All cities, he decided, were beginning to look alike with their tourist projects; you travelled thousands of miles to look at buildings and display temples just like those you had left behind. In a thousand years, digging amongst the ruins, archaeologists would wonder in which country they were working.

      Pinjarri appeared as silently and swiftly as the Aboriginal boy had disappeared: maybe it is an Aboriginal thing, Seville thought. He came through the bands of light and shadow; Seville thought he saw other shadows within the shadows, but he could not be sure. He waited, wondering if he would have to use the knife.

      ‘Mr Gideon?’

      ‘Hello, Dallas. Have you brought some friends with you, back there behind those pylons?’

      Pinjarri peered at him in the shadows. ‘I don’t recognize –’

      ‘I had another name when I was here two years ago.’ He could not remember whether he had used his own name; his memory must be going. ‘I also wasn’t blond or Swiss –’

      Pinjarri peered even closer. Then: ‘Shit, is it really you? Miguel?’

      ‘I might be,’ said Seville, smiling. ‘But call me Michel. I told you, I’m Swiss.’

      ‘Sure, sure, whatever you say.’ Pinjarri was a good-looking man in his late twenties with black curly hair and a complexion only slightly darker than an Arab’s: a white man had stayed some time, maybe only for a night, in the family bed. He had a broken nose, a relic of a year as a professional boxer, and the sad dark eyes of a born loser. Yet he could still smile and it was a pleasant one. ‘Sometimes I wish I could be something else. I’m a half-caste, half-educated, half fucking everything.’

      Pinjarri hadn’t been self-pitying when Seville had last been here; things must be going badly for the black militant movement. ‘You wouldn’t feel at home with the Swiss. No one ever does. Perhaps that’s a better defence than an army.’ Then he said, ‘I need a gun.’

      Pinjarri made a clucking noise. ‘I always thought you’d have everything on hand. You said we were the fucking amateurs when you were here last time –’ So he hadn’t forgotten. ‘You told us what a lot of shits we were –’

      Seville was fluent in six languages and foul-mouthed in none of them; the obscenities grated on his ear. He was unconvinced that violent language achieved anything, except perhaps to help the speaker’s own macho image. In the mouths of women it struck him as just ugly comedy. He was a prude in many ways, except in the matter of killing.

      ‘I need a gun,’ he repeated quietly. ‘As soon as possible.’

      Pinjarri stopped his abuse, looked at him curiously. ‘You gunna kill someone? Or ain’t I supposed to ask? Okay, forget I asked. What sorta gun? A Schmeisser, something like that? They’re not easy to get –’

      Seville doubted if Pinjarri had ever seen a Schmeisser: he was just airing his knowledge of the catalogues. ‘I want a high-powered rifle, one with a telescopic sight. A Springfield or a Winchester or a Garand. What do your kangaroo-shooters use? I’ve seen them on television in those animal welfare propaganda films.’ He could never understand why people should be so concerned with the slaughter of animals. ‘I need something reliable and I need it at once.’

      ‘I been ’roo-shooting meself. I used a Sako .270, it’s a Finnish job–’

      ‘I know it.’

      ‘How soon do you want it?’

      ‘Tomorrow at noon?’

      ‘Shit, I dunno … It’ll cost you.’

      ‘How much?’ He knew the price of a Sako: he had seen one in the window of one of the gun shops he had inspected: $800.

      Pinjarri hesitated, then said almost pugnaciously, ‘Five thousand bucks.’

      That’s a lot for a gun. I don’t want to buy a battery of them.’

      ‘Look, Mick, you know it ain’t just for the gun. Our movement’s in a fucking bad way – we need money any way we can make it …’

      Seville smiled to himself. He thought of the money that was available to the PLO and the IRA. He had been in Beirut in 1982 when the Israelis had moved up into Lebanon; Rah Zaid, who knew of such things, had told him the PLO in four days had moved $400 million out of Lebanese banks into Switzerland. He felt tempted to bargain with Pinjarri, but the joke was too sour.

      ‘Five thousand,’ he agreed. ‘But only if you deliver it by tomorrow noon and not a word to anyone whom it’s intended for. Otherwise …’

      ‘Otherwise what?’ Pinjarri grinned. ‘You wouldn’t kill me, mate. I’m not worth anything.’

      ‘So you wouldn’t be missed.’

      The grin faded. ‘Okay, how will I get in touch with you?’